What musical instrument did Sherlock Holmes play? | Reference.com What musical instrument did Sherlock Holmes play? A: Quick Answer Sherlock Holmes, a fictional character created by author Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle, played the violin. Holmes was a detective known for his astute skills of observation and the ability to solve difficult cases. He is the main character in four novels and fifty-six short stories Full Answer All but four of the Sherlock Holmes stories were narrated by Holmes' friend and biographer, Dr. John Watson. In Conan Doyle's first Sherlock story, "A Study in Scarlet," Watson made a list of skills and assessed Holmes' ability in various areas. It was in this list that Watson stated that Sherlock Holmes played the violin well. Sherlock Holmes and classical music: 10 musical facts about the great detective - Classic FM Classic FM Sherlock Holmes and classical music: 10 musical facts about the great detective 13 October 2014, 10:34 Sherlock Holmes was a Stradivarius-playing violinist who loved opera. Here are 10 musical facts as told by Holmes's sidekick, Dr. Watson.

Listen to Tim Lihoreau at 6am for his Friday Five a Day: five pieces with a Holmesian theme... 1 A night at the opera Having solved The Adventure of the Red Circle, Holmes and Watson rush to a Wagner night at Covent Garden. 2 A preference for German music In The Red-Headed League, Holmes tells Watson he prefers German music to French or Italian. Holmes attends a concert of German works given by Pablo de Sarasate (pictured) at St. James’s Hall. “It is introspective, and I want to instrospect.” Holmes says. 3 A remarkable violinist In A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson describes Holmes’s skill on the violin as “very remarkable, but as eccentric as all his other accomplishments. That he could play pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn ’s Lieder and other favourites.” 4 A record collector In the story The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, Holmes fools his enemies into thinking he was playing the Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffman by Offenbach on the violin, when he’s actually playing them a gramophone recording.

5 A fan of Paganini… In The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, Dr. Watson reports how, over a bottle of claret, Holmes told “anecdote after anecdote” about the extraordinary violin virtuoso, Paganini . 6 … and his female counterpart In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes attends a concert performed by the Hallé Orchestra , featuring the Austrian violinist Wilhelmine “Wilma” Norman-Neruda, who was known as 'the female Paganini '. “It was magnificent,” Holmes later tells Watson. A few months after the publication of A Study in Scarlet, Wilma Norman-Neruda married the conductor Charles Hallé. 7 The last word on Lassus In The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, Holmes is said to be composing a monograph about the polyphonic motets of the Dutch Renaissance composer, Lassus .

Watson writes that the book has “since been printed for private circulation, and is said by experts to be the last word on the subject.” 8 Sherlock’s Strad Sherlock Holmes purchased his own Stradivarius, which was worth at least 500 guineas, for 45 shillings at a pawnbroker’s shop in London's Tottenham Court Road. 9 Outwitted by a diva Even the great Sherlock Holmes has been outwitted by a diva – Irene Adler who, in A Scandal in Bohemia, is a contralto who has performed at La Scala and at Warsaw’s Imperial Opera. 10 A box for Les Huguenots Having solved the case of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes takes a box for the grand French opera, Les Huguenots by Meyerbeer. In the story it is performed by the De Reszkes siblings. The singers Jean, Edouard (pictured), and Josephine de Reszke actually appeared together in productions of Les Huguenots in London and New York. Latest on Classic FM What instrument does Sherlock Holmes play? | Reference.com What instrument does Sherlock Holmes play?

A: Quick Answer Sherlock Holmes plays a violin, although his instrument in the popular television adaptation does not contribute to musical scores heard onscreen. Holmes is an exceptional violinist, although those skills reportedly do not transfer to actors playing his role, including Benedict Cumberbatch. However, television producers replicate the talents of Holmes and the unique look of his old instrument as closely as possible, recording musical scores from accomplished violinists and searching for replica violins matching the color of Holmes' Stradivarius. Full Answer As a character in "The Cardboard Box" by Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes fortifies his image as a mysterious, intelligent and cunning character by playing the violin. Holmes takes violin playing seriously and selects a Stradivarius, one of the most iconic and high-quality violin brands in the world. In keeping with the character, actors playing the part of Holmes appear onscreen with the violin. For the second series of the Sherlock Holmes television show, actor Benedict Cumberbatch appears in several scenes playing the violin. According to the BBC, Cumberbatch learned to play some notes and melodies on the violin for a week before staging a live performance.

However, a professional violinist and Cumberbatch's coach, Eos Chater, ultimately rerecorded the songs for a perfect sound. MUSIC IN ENGLISH DETECTIVE FICTION By Philip Scowcroft: MusicWeb(UK) MUSIC IN ENGLISH DETECTIVE FICTION: A Few Notes by Philip L. Scowcroft Music, a social and artistic activity of the first importance, inevitably makes its way, often quite a substantial way, into literature of all kinds. Monographs have been, or could be, written on music in Jane Austen's novels, or Thomas Hardy's, or J. B. Priestley's, or on music in Galsworthy's FORSYTE CHRONICLES, to name a few instances at random. It may, then, be of some interest to recall (and I do not believe it has been done previously at length) some of the musical associations of the vast bulk of British crime fiction.

Arthur Conan Doyle did not create the detective story, even the British detective story - this predated Sherlock Holmes' earliest appearance (1887) by some 35 years (1) - but Holmes' personality and charisma, much more than anything else, brought about its remarkable popularity, a popularity which has scarcely diminished even today. One of Holmes' principal relaxations and certainly the only one mentioned other than perfunctorily, was music. (2) His two main passions in this field were opera and the violin. We hear of him going to hear the de Reszkes in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots at the end of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (Newnes 1902); in "The Adventure of the Red Circle" (3) he attends a Wagner opera at Covent Garden. Before finally solving the problem of "The Retired Colourman" (4) Holmes goes to the Albert Hall to hear the famous singer "Carina", who may, in reality, have been Anne Louise Cary.

He frequently discusses violins - Stradivari and Amati - doubtless with some authority as he owned a Stradivarius, purchased for as little as fifty-five shillings and lovingly cared for. (5) Though he often played it, it is difficult to determine how good a performer he was, as Dr. Watson was no expert. Watson also described Holmes as a "composer", but he was probably no more than an enthusiastic extemporiser. (6) Holmes went to concerts given by eminent violinists of the day, such as Sarasate, in "The Red Headed League" (7) and Wilma Norman-Neruda, later Lady Hallé, in A STUDY IN SCARLET (8), both Stradivarius players, incidentally. At one time Holmes had an interest in early music, too, putting together a study of "The Polyphonic Motets of Lassus" (9), said by experts - but were there that many of them in the 1890s? - to be "the last word on the subject" (10).

"The Mazarin Stone" (11) is an early example (written in the 1920s, but set in 1903 or thereabouts) of the use of a gramophone as an alibi; later a commonplace in detective fiction as a murderer's aid, this is used here by Holmes himself to trap the criminal, the record being a violin version of the celebrated Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffman (12). One of Holmes' clients, piano teacher Violet Smith in "The Solitary Cyclist" (13), and one of his opponents, ex prima donna of the Warsaw Opera. Irene Adler, "the woman", in "A Scandal in Bohemia" (14), were musicians. One does feel, however, that Holmes did not bring the same intellectual power (pace Lassus and the "polyphonic" motets) to bear on his music as he did on his cases - that he enjoyed Meyerbeer and that his overriding impression of Neruda was a trifle of Chopin in transcription rather than a more serious work suggest that his musical tastes were hardly discriminating. Perhaps this is not unreasonable with a spare-time activity.

The Sherlock Holmes "pastiche", Nicholas Meyer's THE WEST END HORROR (Hodder, 1976) introduces as characters Richard D'Oyly Carte, Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert. The novel is set in 1896, around the time of the premiere of The Grand Duke, by G. & S. - the Savoy background fully researched. Doyle, incidentally, wrote, with James Barrie, the lyric an operetta Jane Annie at the Savoy (1893), the music of which was by Ernest Ford. Another Baker Street pastiche, James Miles' short story, "The Worcester Enigma" has Holmes meeting Elgar and offering a solution to the mystery of the Enigma Variations. One encounters comparatively few musical references in the immediately post-Holmes detective literature. True, the epoch-making novel TRENT'S LAST CASE (Nelson, 1913) by E. C.

Bentley makes its heroine an enthusiast amateur musician, and a performance of Tristan and Isolde is the means by which she and Trent resume acquaintance, thus paving the way to the resolution of the mystery, but by and large one has to wait for the practitioners of the so-called "Golden Age" of the detective novel, basically the period between the two world wars (though most such practitioners continued in business long after 1945) for music and crime to go hand in hand. The most famous of these authors was Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) who, in early life, considered becoming either an opera singer or a concert pianist but rejected both; she also composed - songs and a waltz, entitled One Hour With Thee, which was actually published.

Surprisingly in view of this, her 80-odd detective books are sparse in musical allusions: a few operatic mentions most notably the short story "Swan Song" (from The LISTERDALE MYSTERY (Collins, 1934) whose ambience is a performance of Puccini's Tosca; the source of two alibis in HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS (Collins, 1938); the introduction of a steel band as local colour in A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY (Collins, 1964); and the use of nursery songs as book titles. (15) In THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS (Collins, 1935) the murder weapon is found in the piano stool on top of the (scarcely used) copies of Shostakovich, Hindemith (two rather unusual composers, anyway, for the domestic grand), Czerny et al.

(15A) The murder weapon in "The Bird With the Broken Wing", a short story from THE MYSTERIOUS MR QUIN (Collins, 1930) is a ukulele string; and a flute player appears in DEATH IN THE CLOUDS (Collins, 1935) - could his instrument serve as a vehicle for the means of the murder (a poisoned dart) as well as its musical purpose? (16) Another "Golden Age" writer, who also died only recently, is Dame Ngaio Marsh. In OVERTURE TO DEATH (Collins, 1939) the murder occurs during the playing of the overture in a village concert; in SINGING IN THE SHROUDS (Collins, 1958) the fact that the psychopath murderer can sing in tune is an important clue - one of the suspects is an expert on Gregorian chant. SWING, BROTHER, SWING (Collins, Collins, 1949) takes us into the world of swing bands. The murder, in a London night club, is of the band's piano accordionist, an unsavoury character.

There is an eccentric peer who fancies himself as a drummer ("tympani" is an irritating mis-spelling throughout) - I was surprised at first to read of the band leader (a drug addict) using a baton but this turns out to be a very necessary "prop". Latest of all is PHOTO-FINISH (Collins, 1980), where a temperamental diva is murdered after giving the premiere of a new opera by a young protégé of hers. The setting is a lake island in New Zealand. The prolific John Dickson Carr (d. 1977) rarely mentions music except as incidental period colour in some of his historical detective stories: thus references to the Merry Widow and Land of Hope and Glory place THE WITCH OF THE LOW-TIDE (Hamish Hamilton, 1961) firmly in the Edwardian era; the rather risqué Alhambra Ballet, locale of the book's penultimate scene, does the same for SCANDAL AT HIGH CHIMNEYS (Hamish Hamilton, 1959), set in the 1860s. Dorothy L.

Sayers (1893-1957) followed Doyle in making her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, a musician of "some skill and more understanding (17), a pianist this time. Her first novel, WHOSE BODY (Benn, 1923) mentions Wimsey's baby grand on an early page and, soon afterwards, Detective Inspector Parker's opinion that it was a wonderful instrument. Wimsey agrees but avers that "Scarlatti wants a harpsichord. Piano's too modern - all thrills and overtones". (18) A fairly advanced view for 1923. Sayers' books are very revelatory of social attitudes in the twenties and thirties and her musical references are no exception. In STRONG POISON (Gollancz, 1930) there is an entertaining send-up of contemporary music. Lord Peter and a friend attend a private musical gathering in bohemian London where they hear, on the piano (with violin obbligato), a performance of Stanislas's tone poem on Piccadilly Tube Station (shades of Mossolov's The Iron Foundry).

This does not satisfy one guest who contemptuously dismisses it as "Bourgeois music. Programme music. Pretty! You should hear Vrilovitch's Ecstasy on the Letter Z. That is pure vibration with no antiquated pattern in it. Stanislas - he thinks much of himself but it is as old as the hills - you can sense the resolution at the back of all his discords. Mere harmony in camouflage. Nothing in it. But he takes them all in because he has red hair and reveals his bony structure". The speaker is perhaps a Varèse disciple; Wimsey suggests that to "express the infinite complexity of modern emotion, you need a scale of 32 notes to the octave" (19) (cf. Aloys Haba and his microtones) An earlier book, CLOUDS OF WITNESS (Benn, 1926) includes a scene at "Robert Snoates" reciting his own verse to the tom-tom and penny whistle - an irreverent allusion to Façade, maybe?

STRONG POISON also mentions those (now forgotten) "third-rate musicians in cinemas playing the most ghastly tripe, sandwiched in with snacks of Mendelssohn and torn-off gobbets of the 'Unfinished"' (20) musicians, not all third-rate incidentally, made redundant by the advent of talking films and cinema organs. Two other musical phenomena common in the 1930s, but rarely ever encountered nowadays, are mentioned in HAVE HIS CARCASE (Gollancz 1932): a seaside orchestra (which one of the suspects leads another and another seeks to establish an alibi by means of one of its concerts, commencing at 10.30 a.m. and finishing with the Eroica Symphony, a heavy work so early in the day but apparently substituted for the Pastoral at the last minute; (21) and the two cafe orchestras, one male, one female, entertaining diners at the Corner House.

(22) Another more permanent musical institution is referred to in BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON (Gollancz, 1937) - the village concert , featuring folk songs and sea shanties from the church choir - evidently a fairly useful one as they have progressed to Stanford and, as a Harvest festival anthem, the Hallelujah Chorus - and J. W. Elliot's once-popular ballad, Hybrias the Cretan, to be sung by the victim himself. (23) In GAUDY NIGHT, (Gollancz, 1935) Miss Sayers recalls her own singing days as an undergraduate in Hugh Allen's Oxford Bach Choir by having Harriet Vane, her projection of herself into the Wimsey novels mention her past membership. (24) In the final chapter Wimsey and Harriet attend a Balliol Concert - yet another institution of those days - and hear Bach's Concerto for Two Violins; rather earlier (25) they while the time away in an antique shop singing Elizabethan songs. (26) Another "Golden Age" writer, A.E.W.

Mason (1865-1948), who in younger days had had professional acting experience, introduces opera and operetta into a few of his extremely well-written detective thrillers. In THE SAPPHIRE (Hodder, 1933) one of the main female characters successfully steps up from the chorus to take the title role in a new operetta, Dido (an obviously Offenbachian work and doubtless a reference to Helen, C. B. Cochran's actual re-staging of Offenbach's La Belle Hélène at the Adelphi in 1932, with music arranged by Erich Korngold and English lyrics by A. P. Herbert). The aristocratic heroine of NO OTHER TIGER (Hodder, 1927) is also cast for an operetta lead though one fancies that this thriller's stirring dénouement and its aftermath prevent her fulfilling it.

The heroine of the slightly later THEY WOULDN'T BE CHESSMEN (Hodder, 1935) is a young English opera singer resting her voice - in the course of the novel she nearly loses her life as well as her voice but both are happily (or more or less happily) restored at the end. Dilwyn Rees' THE CAMBRIDGE MURDERS (Gollancz, 1945) features a college Organist, said to be one of the finest in England, putting Rees' fictitious Fisher College on a par with the real King's College, a Detective Inspector who enjoys music of the Bach and pre-Bach eras and an undergraduate bearing the name of the Elizabethan virginalist Giles Farnaby. Rees was the celebrated archaeologist Glyn Daniel.

(27) None of these novels has a specifically musical ambience One which has, and still a book to be re-read with the greatest pleasure, is Cyril Hare's WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (Faber, 1949) whose provincial amateur orchestral society is a brilliantly convincing setting, with believable, three-dimensional characters, several of them musicians, the orchestra's conductor, short-sighted but with razor-sharp hearing, being especially memorable. The victim is the visiting soloist, a world-famous violinist; if the reader is to spot the villain before the police, who are aided by the society's Treasurer, an elderly barrister with little interest in music but whose wife is a member of the orchestra - still is - we are told in a later book THAT YEW TREE'S SHADE (Faber, 1954) - then a detailed knowledge of the orchestration of Mozart's symphonies is essential.

Hare, a County Court judge in his non-literary life, never repeated this musical excursion, although there are references to church and other music in THAT YEW TREE'S SHADE and his best novel TRAGEDY AT LAW (Faber, 1942) turns on a running down case where the injured party suffers the apparently mild disability of a crushed finger - but he is a concert pianist' "Michael Gilbert", another lawyer-writer, set his CLOSE QUARTERS (Hodder, 1947) in a cathedral close - choir and organist play their parts in the plot and regrettably one of the Vicars-Choral is the murderer. In Gilbert's later SMALLBONE DECEASED (Hodder, 1950), one of the detectives (and we ourselves, surely) decide a suspect cannot be guilty after appreciating his fine singing of I Would Beside my Lord from Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Gilbert's THE BLACK SERAPHIM (Hodder 1983) returns to the cathedral choir/close setting of CLOSE QUARTERS.

George A Birmingham's THE HYMN TUNE MYSTERY (1931) also has an English cathedral setting, the murdered man being the (alcoholic) Organist, found dead in his own organ loft. The relatively small, but outstandingly entertaining output of "Edmund Crispin" understandably has a musical flavour, for Crispin's real name was Bruce Montgomery; he was Organist of St. John's College Oxford 1940-3 and composer of choral works long and short, orchestral pieces, an Oxford Requiem and Shakespearean songs. He wrote for films too and his novel FREQUENT HEARSES (Gollancz, 1950) is set in a film studio and brings in film music as background colour. "In his concert works Napier was a somewhat acrid modernist but like most such composers he unbuttoned, becoming romantic and sentimental, when he was writing for the films" (28) "Napier" is delighted to be told his latest film score is "beautiful", though he says, "Don't judge me by this stuff".

There are mentions of real composers, too: Geoffrey Bush (who co-operated with Crispin in the leg-pulling short-short crime story 'Who Killed Baker?") (29) and Ireland, presumably John Ireland (1879-1962), whose film score The Overlanders was such a success. Crispin's detective, Gervase Fen, is an Oxford don and his first novel, THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY (Gollancz, 1944) is set in Fen's college. The first murder involves a woman being shot from outside through a room in which two men are listening to a radio concert comprising The Mastersingers overture and Ein Heldenleben ("a rich Teutonic concoction", as Fen remarks and a good cover for the noise made by a silenced pistol).

Later, the college Organist has his throat cut in his own organ loft during evensong but he survives long enough to indicate the murderer's name by pulling out the appropriate stops; a whimsical touch The evening service just sung is Dyson in D, characterised by Fen as "theatrical but nice"; (30) an air-raid siren is "a dismal portamento progression of minor thirds". (31) The background of SWAN SONG (Gollancz, 1947) is a production of The Mastersingers in Oxford, the climax coming when an attempt is made to murder the Walther during his Prize Song! A deliciously absentminded opera composer affords light relief during the story. The characters of the opera company are well imagined, and are more convincing indeed than the mystery itself. THE MOVING TOYSHOP (Gollancz, 1946), set in Oxford, is basically a giddy chase of the crooks through the streets and colleges, a richly humorous episode being a rehearsal of Brahms' German Requiem by the "Oxford University Handel Society" (Hugh Allen's Bach Choir again?) in the Sheldonian.

BURIED FOR PLEASURE (Gollancz) introduces a psychiatrist who enjoys ballads; cathedral music looms heavily in HOLY DISORDERS (Gollancz, 1945). The 32' pedal tuba of a (fictitious) West Country cathedral organ has a part to play in one murder - the other, earlier, murder is of the Organist himself but, as Fen comments, "the music wasn't as bad as all that" (32) The "viewpoint" character is a composer and stand-in cathedral Organist who attempts, unsuccessfully, to catch out one of the "baddies", whose "cover" is an interest in cathedral music, by inviting his opinion on mythical piece like Stanford in E Flat and Byrd's In Exitu Israel. Crispin's short story "Lacrimae Rerum" (33) tells of the murder of a composer using an ingenious alibi based on a broadcast concert. But hitches occur even on the BBC. It is no accident that "musical" detective stories seem to increase in number the nearer we get to the present time.

Detective fiction is better written and more readable these days, taking the genre as a whole and a plausible, carefully researched background is more of a necessity in the old days when the "whodunit" puzzle was everything. Dan Billany's THE OPERA HOUSE MURDERS (Faber, 1940) has plenty of action and blood (8 corpses!). Hidden treasure of £100,000 is the stake; the climax takes place in an opera house and one of the main characters is a leading operatic soprano. The narrator/hero is something of a crook, though he ends happily surprisingly as he is fearfully bashed many times in the course of the plot. Operatic references are perfunctory, however. The background is much less idiomatically done in Crispin's SWAN SONG, already discussed, and in Fletcher's DON'T WHISTLE MACBETH (Macmillan, 1976), set in a Glyndebourne-type country opera house. The opera being performed is Don Giovanni. The chapter headings are titles of arias therefrom. The murder occurs at the dress rehearsal of the final scene.

There are some bewildering mistaken identities, the "wrong" person being killed, but relatively little detail. The Macbeth of the title refers of course to Verdi's opera, not Shakespeare's play. The murderous climax of Gladys Mitchell's FAULT IN THE STRUCTURE (Michael Joseph, 1977) comes at the end of an amateur production of The Beggar's Opera; disappointing as a mystery, this tale has a brilliant scene in which the amateurs squabble in committee over the production and its casting. The same writer's earlier DEATH AT THE OPERA (Grayson Grayson, 1934) is also investigated by the hideous but highly intelligent Mrs. Beatrice Bradley. Set against a school production of The Mikado, victim being the Katisha; the motive (that the murderer thought the part would be badly played) seems ludicrously inadequate. (34) Especially enjoyable is DEATH ON THE HIGH Cs (Collins, 1977) by John Barnard, featuring a small provincial company playing in Manchester. The victim is a blowsy, sexy Australian contralto whose "recent Carmen fresh in everyone's mind.

Brazen, blatant, torrid and vulgar, it had some critics reaching for their superlatives and others simply reaching. The rest of the company - the smooth Musical Director, the second-rate producer, the amiable coloured tenor lead, the brilliant young soprano, the visiting Italian diva - are excellent characterisations; the opera background is knowledgeably, wittily, rather irreverently described. The investigating Detective Superintendent is an opera buff. The mystery is good, with simple and ingenious misdirection of the reader. The same author's DEATH AND THE PRINCESS (Collins, 1982) includes a description of a State Visit to Covent Garden where the opera being staged is Meyerbeer's L'Africaine "one aria surrounded by four acts of padding and lots of pretty scenery the story made The Pirates of Penzance look like a masterpiece of realistic theatre. The music had stirring bits, jolly bits and totally ludicrous bits". FUNERAL MARCH FOR SIEGFRIED (Elek, 1979) is yet another operatic whodunit, Audrey Williamson's first novel.

The opera is (obviously) Götterdämmerung, the company German, the weapon curare, the arrow poison of the South American Indians. Detective Superintendent York, another opera buff (a lot of police opera fans about, seemingly) (34A) digs up roots in Nazi Germany - an ingenious book, but the characterisation lacks variety. In Reginald Hill's thriller TRAITOR'S BLOOD (Collins, 1984) the chase momentarily visits a performance of Aida at Rome's open-air opera house. Kenneth O'Hara's THE SEARCHES OF THE DEAD (Gollancz, 1980) is set in Wales against the background of a musical show using Purcell's music. We have mentioned policemen as music lovers. L. A. G. Strong's Chief Inspector Ellis McKay of Scotland Yard is a composer; in WHICH I NEVER (Collins, 1950) his musical talents are put to use - the storyline is scatty but there is a splendidly observed rehearsal for a village concert, in which McKay is accompanist and talent spotter, and the concert itself is amusing, too.

Mary Kelly's first series detective, Inspector Brett Nightingale of Scotland Yard, is married to an opera singer who usually appears abroad - a nice reversal of the usual situation - as here the policeman is the grass widower instead of his wife being a "police widow". He himself, we learn, is a capable amateur involved with a suburban opera society. Her first novel, A COLD COMING (Secker and Warburg, 1956) features the Nightingales and two undergraduates, victims of drug smuggling, kidnapping and attempted murder, and later assistants to the police in tracking down the culprits. For them, too, music is, significantly, an overpowering interest and solace. The climax occurs at and around Covent Garden Opera House, when the vegetable market was still there. The sequel, DEAD MAN'S RIDDLE (Secker and Warburg, 1957), set in Edinburgh against the background of the University, finds Christina Nightingale singing in Britain for once - a concert and a recital - and, later, abducted by the murderer. The clue to a coded letter leading to the truth comes from a song in Die Winterreise.

Other stories with an operatic flavour (35) apart from Ellis Peter's FUNERAL OF FIGARO (Collins, 1962) (36), DEATH OF A FAT GOD (Collins, 1963) by H. R. F. Keating and Gerald Sinstadt's THE FIDELIO SCORE (Long, 1965?), an espionage novel, are those by the late V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, whose series detective is Dr. R. V. Davie, an amiable Cambridge don with a keen and knowledgeable love of opera. In MY FOE OUTSTRETCH'D BENEATH THE TREE (Gollancz, 1968), chapter two follows him to a Covent Garden production of Turandot. Opera is not just verbal "wallpaper", for this novel is concerned with dope running, the dope being passed on at operatic performances - there is an ingenious (musical) communications system. The dénouement takes place at one of those London suburban performances of rare operas - though Manon Lescaut is perhaps not so much of a rarity - by small companies in inadequate halls: a brilliantly observed piece of description.

ONLY A MATTER OF TIME (Gollancz, 1969) is set in a small country town holding its annual summer music festival, which is so delightfully portrayed one longs to be there! Dr. Davie hears a string quartet, the first modern performance of John Christopher Smith, junior's opera The Fairies (37) (the book regrettably muddles the composer with his father) and the final concert, an al fresco madrigal evening. He even enjoys an evening of poetry and jazz, complete with four letter words, but detective work (or does it?) keeps him from a Webern concert. Matters are brought to a satisfactory conclusion just as the festival itself concludes. There is no opera in NO CASE FOR THE POLICE (Gollancz, 1970) but the pleasures of domestic music-making are recalled (38). The other Dr. Davie novels in an all-too-short canon are DEATH'S BRIGHT DART (Gollancz, 1967) and TO STUDY A LONG SILENCE (Gollancz, 1972) (38A).

In H C Bailey's RAGGED FORTUNE short story "The Germany Song", Mignon's aria from Thomas opera Mignon is the key to a code message and in Freeman Wills Croft's first novel THE CASK, (Collins, 1920) our alibi is established with the help of the performances of Berlioz's opera in Brussels. Antonia Fraser's YOUR ROYAL HOSTAGE (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1987) has a royal princess kidnapped by animal rights protesters at a Royal Gala performance of Verdi's Otello at Covent Garden. Festivals, like opera, are popular backgrounds to crime. We may mention briefly Ralph Stephenson's FESTIVAL DEATH (Gifford, 1966) - the festival is Bath - and the same writer's SPIES IN CONCERT (Gifford, 1965) is also a spy thriller-with-music - and Marguerite Stand's DEATH CAME IN LUCERNE (Hale, 1966).

THE HORN OF ROLAND (Macmillan, 1974) by Ellis Peters is set in a festival in a small Tyrolean lakeside town. The title is that of a new composition for soloists, horn and orchestra by composer-conductor Lucas Corinth, who has World War II associations with the region. This is a romantic thriller rather than a detective story, the little detection necessary being carried out by the horn soloist, a young Englishman, but the festival atmosphere, musical detail and scenery are equally well drawn. The festival in Alan Hunter's GENTLY INSTRUMENTAL (Cassell, 1977) is in a seaside town during a heatwave. A composer (homosexual) of national reputation has written a Clarinet Quintet for the festival. The clarinettist (also homosexual) is found dead after an altercation at rehearsal. The Maigret-like Chief Superintendent Gently investigates or, rather, hangs about, and the killer (not, luckily for the première, a musician) eventually confesses. The musical background is but lightly sketched in; oddly for such an important festival premiere the string players all seem to be local amateurs!

Simon Troy's SWIFT TO ITS CLOSE (Gollancz, 1969) is a murder mystery set in a Welsh festival of music. Nor should we overlook pop "festivals". FESTIVAL! (Collins, 1976) by Michael Butterworth is a sparklingly written, ironical effort, telling of international skulduggery and attempted mass-murder of the pop fans with stolen cholera germs. The more recent FESTIVAL by J. R. L. Anderson (Gollancz, 1979) is only partly set in the pop festival, despite its title. Pop music is superficially but sympathetically described - a murder takes place at the festival and suspicion falls on the members of one of the groups playing there. A stirring, finely told yarn, whose other elements include the kidnapping of a chief constable's infant daughter, small boat sailing and several bent policemen. Not only classical music, indeed, invades detective fiction.

We have noted Ngaio Marsh's SWING, BROTHER, SWING; Terry Rieman's VAMP UNTIL READY (Gollancz, 1951) and Ray Sonin's THE DANCE BAND MYSTERY (Quality Press, 1940) are about old-style dance bands. Christopher Bush, THE CASE OF THE EXTRA MAN (Macdonald, 1956), L. Grex (Leonard Gribble), CROONER'S SWAN SONG (Hutchinson, 1935), Barbara Worsley Gough, LANTERN HILL (Michael Joseph, 1957) and A. E. Jones, IT MAKES YOU THINK (John Long, 1958) all mention crooners. Better than any of these for background is DO NOTHIN' TILL YOU HEAR FROM ME by John Wainwright (Macmillan, 1977).

The narrator, "Lucky" Luckhurst, an abrasive character who tells the story (rather wearingly) in slightly outdated American slang, has his own ten-piece jazz band in which he plays double bass and dreams of setting up a "big band" à la Glenn Miller. He is an enthusiast, and there is no enthusiast like a jazz enthusiast - we hear it all in the course of the book, which has an authentic feel both on the jazz side and the police side. (There is another police music lover - a jazz fan, naturally, and he even plays the clarinet himself). The mystery, which at times seems like a sub-plot, so all-pervading is the jazz talk, is good too. The same author's WALTHER P.38 (Macmillan, 1976) features a pop group, The Whirlybirds, described with biting sarcasm by "Lucky" Luckhurst who at that time was unlucky enough to be bass guitar in the group. There is more jazz in James Grant's DON'T SHOOT THE PIANIST (Piatkus, 1980).

The hero is a jazz band leader and proprietor of a sleazy Battersea club who promotes a prestige jazz festival with financial aid from the local villains counting on using the decibels to drown the noise of explosions breaking open nearby bank vaults. Their scheme fails (though the festival is a roaring success) - I found this stirringly told, slightly zany story enjoyable, but there are rather more four letter words than are absolutely necessary. John Hilton Buxton's PASSION IN THE PEAK (Collins, 1985) has as its setting the preparations for an updated Oberammergau Passion Play in a Derbyshire village. The music in this is eclectic, but mainly pop and the victim is a superannuated pop singer set tot take the part of Christ. Ellis Peters, three of whose books we have already discussed, set her BLACK IS THE COLOUR OF MY TRUE LOVE'S HEART (Collins, 1967) in a week-end school on folk music; the same writer's THE PIPER ON THE MOUNTAIN (Collins, 1966) introduces that stirring Slovakian folk instrument, the fujara.

Simon Brett's THE DEAD SIDE OF THE MIKE (Gollancz, 1980) has the spoken introductions (and the musical items themselves) to a BBC disc jockey programme as an ingenious "treasure hunt" type lure to one of the victims. The murder motive is the need to keep secret a profitable traffic in pirated tapes of light music. Brett's other books introduce the lighter music forms as background to the light entertainment world they inhabit. Beverley Nichols' DEATH TO SLOW MUSIC (W.H. Allen, 1956) happens in a seaside resort during the production of a new musical written by a character bearing a more than passing resemblance to Noel Coward. Despite its embracing double murder, drug running and musical plagiarism (of Delius, of all people!) the story moves rather slowly. And there is Anthony Gilbert's THE MUSICAL COMEDY CRIME (Collins, 1933). Josephine Bell's short story "The Carol Singers" is an example of the criminal opportunities afforded by a common, seasonal musical activity. (39) Mostly, however, the music is classical.

Titles which one can only mention (as they are out of print!) are E.C.R. Lorac, THE ORGAN SPEAKS (Sampson Low, 1935) where an organist is murdered in a "music pavillion" in Regent's Park, Charles Franklin, FACE THE MUSIC (Robert Hale, 1957), Amelia Reynolds Long, SYMPHONY IN MURDER (Quality Press, 1953), Margaret Newman, MURDER TO MUSIC (John Long, 1959), Peter Chester, KILLING COMES EASY (Herbert Jenkins, 1958), Thomas Arthur Plummer, THE WESTLADE MURDERS (Stanley Paul, 1953), Sidney Hobson Courtier, THE CORPSE WON'T SING (Hammond, 1964), Simon Troy, SWIFT TO ITS CLOSE (Gollancz, 1969) Diana Ramsey, LITTLE MURDER MUSIC (Collins, 1972) and Josephine Bell THE SUMMER SCHOOL MYSTERY (Methuen, 1950). with its school orchestra background.

In H C Bailey's Reggie Fortune short story 'The German Song' Mignon's song from Ambroise Thomas's opera is an important clue. Josephine Bell also wrote a short story 'The Case of the Murdered Cellist'. Bruce Hamilton's TOO MUCH OF WATER (Crescent Press, 1958) set on a Barbados bound cruise ship, includes a middle aged conductor, Edgar Cantrell. a countertenor and a young piano teacher. Music plays an important part in the plot. And there is also Michael Kenyon THE ELGAR VARIATIONS (Putnam, 1981) while John Buxton Hilton's THE QUIET STRANGER (Collins, 1985) set in 1872 has a mention of the spa orchestra at Buxton in Derbyshire. We come then to J J Marric - a pen name of John Creasey. There are musical references in Marric's Gideon (of Scotland Yard) series as Gideon's youngest daughter is a professional concert pianist but the perfunctory nature of these indicates that Marric had no profound interest in classical music. P. D.

James' DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS (Faber, 1977) set in the Fens, introduces a village concert (a source of alibis) - many of the characters seem to be fond of music. H. R. F. Keating's amusing short story "Mrs. Craggs and the Living Dead" (WINTERS CRIMES 13, Macmillan, 1981) deals with a proposed newspaper obituary notice for a munificent patron of the opera. There are some others. First, Joan Aiken, LAST MOVEMENT (Gollancz, 1977), set in a sanatorium-cum-music centre on a Greek island.

Murder happens, but it is largely incidental; one does recall, though, the astonishingly catholic selection of music said to be performed in the centre - Franz Schmidt's Piano Quintet in G, Peter and the Wolf, Samuel Barber's mini-opera A Hand of Bridge, a Mozart wind octet, a Respighi song, Haydn baryton trios, Schubert's Magic Harp overture (rather preciously not styled Rosamunde) and Les Mystères d'Elsinore, a (fictitious) opera by an 85 year old composer resident in the sanatorium. Second, Maurice Culpan's THE VASILIKO AFFAIR (Collins, 1968) includes among its dramatis personae a mentally unbalanced mid-European concert pianist (the Vasiliko of the title), a sympathetic, if rather stiff, concert impresario, an unbelievably smug music critic and a young, immature schoolteacher/composer. At the centre of things (which include two murders) is the manuscript of a recently rediscovered "piano" (sic) concerto in A by Bach (not the well-known one in that key).

This presents a very jaundiced view of musical and journalistic circles, though there is one good scene in which an East German conductor directs a rehearsal of Schoenberg's Erwartung. Third, Jennifer Bland's DEATH IN WAITING (Arthur Barker, 1975): the narrator/heroine is a (not over-successful) young concert pianist who during the course of the book takes a job as music organiser for a Scottish region. The story at first raises supernatural fears, which dissolve when the murderers, two of them with four killings between them, are unmasked. Mark Hebden's DEATH SET TO MUSIC (Hamish Hamilton, 1979) is not a 'musical 'novel despite its title, but the victim, an opera maniac, meets her doom while the stereo plays Rigoletto. It is set in Dijon (France); Inspector Pel, hypochondriacal and ill-tempered, but shrewd and human enough, investigates quite entertainingly.

In Ivor Baker's DEATH AND VARIATIONS (Hale, 1977) the victim also dies, by gunshot, while listening to Elgar's Enigma Variations - what is the significance of the subsequent substitution of a Mahler symphony on the record player? PARTING BREATH (Collins, 1977) by Catherine Aird, murder in a University quadrangle takes place to the background of the weekly rehearsal of the University's Madrigal and Glee Club which includes, as the author says, with possibly unconscious humour, "not only singers but musicians" (chap. 7). The imperfectly described instruments do not however seem very suitable for accompanying Elizabethan ayres or madrigals. Edwin Leather's THE MOZART SCORE (Macmillan, 1979) is a lively, quick moving tale with Israelis, Palestinian terrorists and others, set in Vienna and the then Jugoslavia. The hero, a British art dealer, is a Mozart enthusiast. The Mozart "score", a supposedly original manuscript, is used as a decoy in the story. The author should have known that Mozart composed no Concerto in B Flat Minor and no Etudes.

In John Bedford's THE NEMESIS CONCERTO (Robert Hale, 1982) a killer of evil persons who have escaped legal retribution leaves musical clues at each murder. He calls himself Lohengrin but there is no Wagner in the story. The Scotland Yard detective is a music lover but even the (rather fantastic) ending is always a beat behind. The "concerto" is Brahms' 2nd for piano - Lohengrin turns out to be a famous pianist. Writing and plot no more than beta minus. In PERFORMANCE by Douglas Clark (Gollancz, 1985) the contralto soloist in a North Country Messiah drops dead at the end of the oratorio. Why? And has it any connection with the death of eleven other ladies during the previous year? Although no decent choral society would entertain a conductor as wet as this one the atmosphere of the performance is nicely conveyed; a blind piano tuner - though who uses a piano for Messiah performances these days? - is an important witness. An ingenious mystery, like all of Douglas Clark's. How can we draw together the threads of this rather random survey?

Music, like every important human activity, is bound to figure in fiction to some degree and it no doubt does so in crime or detective fiction quite as much as in other types of novels, relatively speaking. Many of the best detective stories are notable for their well-imagined settings and musical ones - an orchestral society (WHEN THE WIND BLOWS), a festival (ONLY A MATTER OF TIME) or, especially, an opera company (several titles) - can be ingenious, fresh and entertaining. A few detectives, notably Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey, are musicians themselves, though this does not make these two, at any rate, better detectives, for they do not, so far as we are told, have any opportunities to use their musical expertise in their cases. Some detective novelists obviously love music and one - "Edmund Crispin" - was a professional musician; his musical allusions, light-hearted though they often are, are usually authoritative. The work of Dorothy L.

Sayers, though none of her novels is a "musical" one, is of interest to the social (and musical) historian for its reminders of half-forgotten attitudes and institutions and the books we have mentioned by Cyril Hare, Clinton-Baddeley and probably one or two others may be of similar value in the future. Some authors imagine musical backgrounds better than others - usually (though not quite always) these are also the ones who write the best and who devise the most convincing mysteries. But most crime fiction aims purely to entertain and the music therein, when it does occur, it is mostly subordinate to this general aim. © Philip L Scowcroft ____________ 1. Remember Dickens' EDWIN DROOD (1870), whose villain (possibly hero - who knows?) Jasper is a music teacher and "Cloisterham" Cathedral choirmaster. Remember also Wilkie Collins' earlier THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1860) and its villain Count Fosco, connoisseur of the operas of Rossini and Donizetti (the heroine of the same book, Laura Fairlie, enjoys Mozart - nothing should be read into their respective musical tastes though!). 2.

The fullest treatment of the subject is Guy Warrack, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND MUSIC (Faber, 1947). 3. From HIS LAST BOW (Murray, 1917). 4. From THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (Murray, 1927). 5. He actually, we are told, kept it in its case - unlike his tobacco which resided in a Persian slipper, or his unanswered correspondence nailed to the mantelpiece with a jack-knife. Judging from Doyle's original rough notes he intended to make Holmes a collector of rare violins 6. See Warrack, op. cit. p.29. Indeed to judge from A STUDY IN SCARLET (Ward Lock 1888) chapter 2, Holmes perhaps preferred extemporisation or musical doodling, though to appease Watson he played Mendelssohn lieder and other favourite airs. 7. From THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (Newnes, 1982).

The recital was at the old St James's Hall; Holmes' behaviour, "gently waving his long thin fingers in time to the music" can hardly have helped those in neighbouring seats to concentrate on the music. 8. Chapter 4, Watson, who admittedly did not attend the concert, seemed to think 'Norman Neruda' was a man! 9. In "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" from HIS LAST BOW. 10. Warrack, op cit doubts the 'existence' of such a monograph; for contrary views see Trevor H Hall, SHERLOCK HOLMES (Duckworth, 1969) pp. 86-92, Michael Harrison, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (David and Charles, rev, ed 1971) pp. 237-257 and S C Roberts, HOLMES AND WATSON: A MISCELLANY (Oxford, 1953) pp. 45-50 (a review of Warrack's book), especially pp. 45-46. 11. From THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. 12. Warrack op.

cit. pp.11-12 discusses some interesting problems arising out of this; but see Roberts loc. cit. pp.46-48. 13. From THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (Newnes, 1905). 14. From THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Irene Adler was described (by Watson, an unreliable witness) as a prima donna and a contralto - but there are very few major operatic contralto roles. 15. On the latter, see G. C. Ramsey, MISTRESS OF MYSTERY (Collins,1968), especially Appendix G which prints the tunes of the songs. 15A. The Shostakovich may be the Preludes Op. 34, the Hindemith Ludus Tonalis. Also in the stool was the ballad I know a lovely garden by Guy d'Hardelot (Helen Guy), composer of Because. 16. For a fuller account see William Weaver, "Music and Mystery", article in H. R. F.

Keating (ed), AGATHA CHRISTIE: FIRST LADY OF CRIME (Weidenfeld, 1977), pp. 185-92. 17. CLOUDS OF WITNESS (Benn, 1926), Chapter IV. 18. Chapter 3. He expresses a similar view in STRONG POISON (Gollancz, 1930), Chap. XIII , before playing Bach's Italian Concerto. 19. Chapter VIII. 24 Chapter 3 25 Chapter 19 26 For a fuller survey of music in Sayers' novels, see my SIDELIGHTS ON SAYERS (Dorothy L. Sayers Historical and Literary Society, 1981) pp 1-4. 27 Chapter 13 28 Chapter 4 The reverse is true of another film composer, Broderick Thouless of Crispin's The glimpses of the Moon (Gollancz 1977) 29 Reprinted in FEN COUNTRY (Gollancz, 1979). 30 Chapter 8.

In HOLY DISORDERS (Gollancz, 1946) Fen dubs the same Service "a battle of religion and romance". 31 Also Chapter 8 33 From BEWARE OF THE TRAINS (Gollancz, 1953). 34 p. 9. 34A Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse is an inveterate Wagner fan. 35 Ballet is featured in Caryll Brahms and S. J. Simon's minor classic, A BULLET IN THE BALLET (Michael Joseph, 1937) and "Roger Bax", CAME THE DAWN (Hutchinson, 1949). 36 Ellis Peter's RAINBOW'S END (Macmillan, 1978) has a rich business tycoon settle in the Welsh Marshes and "take over" everything in sight, including the post of local church organist, and inflicts a whole lot of 20th Century church and organ music on choir and congregation. This is not, however, the motive for his murder. 37 It has not in reality been staged this century yet, alas! 38 pp.

68-69 38A It is interesting that Clinton-Baddeley furnished the libretto of an opera himself. The What d'Ye Call It (1966) by Phyllis Tate whose operatic output included The Lodger (1960) based on Mrs Belloc Lowndes' famous thriller novel which itself derives from Jack the Ripper. 39 Reprinted in JOHN CREASEY'S CRIME COLLECTION 1979 (Gollancz, 1979), , pp. 9-42. 40 The writer gratefully acknowledges the patient assistance of the staff of Doncaster Borough Library Service in compiling this paper. Sherlock facts: 22 things you didn't know, from the real Baker Street to a Korean tribute Sherlock facts: 22 things you didn't know, from the real Baker Street to a Korean tribute Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman in Sherlock Credit: BBC Ross Jones 1 January 2017 • 11:00am As Sherlock returns to our screens, here are 22 curious things you might not have known about the BBC series: 1.

It all began with a speech In 2006, well-known Holmes enthusiast Mark Gatiss was asked to address the Sherlock Holmes Society's annual dinner at the Houses of Parliament. Gatiss, who brought along Steven Moffat as his guest, told the audience about a meeting at the BBC to discuss the possibility of resurrecting Arthur Conan Doyle's creation for a Christmas special. He and the Corporation failed to reach an agreement, but as he "raced round the endless circular corridors, frothing at the mouth at what these philistines might be planning", Gatiss bumped into John Simpson, recently returned from Kabul. “As he passed me,” Gatiss explained , “I touched him on the arm and whispered: ‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive’.” This gave him the seed of an idea, which he and Moffat subsequently grew into a modern-day Sherlock: "A young army doctor, wounded in Afghanistan finds himself alone and friendless in London," he teased the group. "Short of cash, he bumps into an old medical acquaintance who tells him he knows of someone looking for a flatmate.

This bloke’s alright but a little odd..." Gatiss was effectively pitching his and Moffat’s Sherlock to the toughest crowd imaginable, and they approved. 2. There is no abandoned tube station at Sumatra Road Benedict Cumberbatch in The Empty Hearse Credit: BBC The location chosen for the bomb-laden tube carriage meant to blow up Parliament in the season three opener The Empty Hearse is actually in West Hampstead, and isn't the site of a half-finished London Underground station (although the Bull & Bush abandoned station is nearby). It's nowhere near Westminster, but was chosen by Gatiss as a sly reference to The Giant Rat of Sumatra, a Holmes adventure mentioned (but never expanded upon) in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. Sherlock's production team couldn't get hold of a real carriage, so mocked up their own District Line replica - despite exterior shots clearly showing a Jubilee Line train. Tube-loving viewers have also been quick to point out other inaccuracies. 3.

Not everybody appreciated Irene Adler’s nudity Lara Pulver as Irene Adler Credit: BBC The BBC reportedly received over 100 complaints about actress Lara Pulver’s portrayal of Holmes’s female sparring partner as an upmarket dominatrix who used pre-watershed seminudity to bewitch the detective in A Scandal in Belgravia. But some Sherlock purists objected on different grounds. Irene Adler as conceived by Conan Doyle in A Scandal in Bohemia, it was argued in blog after blog , was a formidable woman of honour, who would never allow herself to become a pawn of Moriarty, or to fall for Holmes after showing him her breasts. Steven Moffat disagreed with the feminists. "In the original,” he told The Guardian, “Irene Adler's victory over Sherlock Holmes was to move house and run away with her husband. That's not a feminist victory." 4. Holmes and Watson are good enough to eat Speedy’s Cafe , the sandwich emporium frequented by Holmes and Watson in the series, is a real café on Gower Street, near Euston – the BBC’s stand-in for 221b Baker Street.

(In the Sherlock pilot it was run by Una Stubbs’s character and named Mrs Hudson’s Snax n' Sarnies, but that idea was swiftly dropped.) The fans who flock there from all over the world can now enjoy specially created Sherlock-themed snacks, specifically the Sherlock wrap (chicken, bacon, cheddar cheese, lettuce, peppers, red onion, cucumber, chilli sauce – all "wrapped up as tightly as Sherlock’s personality") or the Watson Wrap (roasted vegetables, spinach, tomatoes, spring onion, Brie, sour cream – "safe, warm, and comforting, like his personality"). 5. Despite China’s best efforts, Sherlock isn’t gay As amply demonstrated by the kisses in season three’s first episode, The Empty Hearse , Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have always enjoyed flirting with the ambiguity of Sherlock’s sexuality. "Everyone recruited him to their perspective, their interpretation," Benedict Cumberbatch once said when asked about Holmes’s sex life. "I’ve had asexuals come up to me and thank me for representing asexuals." But they’re mistaken, according to Moffat: "There's no indication in the original stories that [Holmes] was asexual or gay," he told The Guardian .

None of which has stopped millions of Chinese fans from adopting Sherlock as a gay icon, with a vast archive of literature dedicated to his romantic exploits with Watson . There’s a 39-chapter romance novel; a much-viewed video super-cut of Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (or ‘Curly Fu’ and ‘Peanut’, to give them their Chinese nicknames) exchanging longing looks set to slushy music; plus, of course, the inevitable S&M scenarios. All of which may seem like fairly standard fan-fiction fare – until you remember that in China, writing what the authorities consider filth is a crime punishable with a lengthy jail term. 6. Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t play the violin quite as well as Sherlock Credit: BBC In Arthur Conan Doyle’s story The Cardboard Box, it transpires that Sherlock Holmes owns and plays a violin made by Antonio Stradivarius himself. The Sherlock production team, however, uses a different violin for each series (series three’s is a £1,200 Chinese-made Con Fuoco), all on loan from Cardiff Violins.

(The shop’s website contains a sweet testimonial from a ‘Mr John H Watson’, thanking the staff for being ‘extremely patient’ with his friend: ‘He would thank you himself; only, well Sherlock doesn’t really do that sort of thing ...’) For season two’s on-screen violin scenes, Cumberbatch was taught how to play and ‘violin act’ by Eos Chater , a member of the classical group Bond. Although the actor played live on set, the playing heard on the soundtrack is by Chater. "Benedict had a week, and made a surprisingly good sound," she wrote of the experience on her blog. "I have no doubt he would be a good violinist if he had the inclination." 7. Yet his pen-catching skills are beyond reproach A scene in The Blind Banker shows John throwing a pen to Sherlock, who catches it without even looking at it. Cumberbatch made the catch on the first take (using a mirror so he could see it coming), but the cameraman was too slow and missed it. He got it again on the third. 8.

China can’t understand why Sherlock takes so long to make During David Cameron’s official visit to China in December 2013, the Prime Minister allowed Chinese citizens to ask him questions through Sina Weibo , the country’s Twitter -like social network. Among queries about Larry the Downing Street cat, Tom Daley, Visa application forms and Wendi Deng, by far the most popular request was: “Please urge Sherlock crew to be quick! They have had us waiting for two years for every season!” Cameron diplomatically pointed out that “I can’t tell them what to do, as it’s an independent company”, before urging fans to pass the time by reading Conan Doyle’s stories. 9. Sherlock’s staircase would please purists In Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock asks Watson how many steps lead up to their quarters at 221b Baker Street. Watson hasn't a clue. “I know there are 17 steps, because I have both seen and observed,” Holmes tells him. Because Sherlock fans are similarly observant, there are 17 steps leading to the first floor of the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and another 17 between the hall and front room on the Cardiff set of Sherlock. 10.

In Japan, he’s a comic book hero Japan has a long tradition of Sherlock-influenced, copyright-avoiding manga or anime: Young Miss Holmes, a manga comic about Sherlock’s niece; Detective Hound, a canine anime series co-created by Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki; the unrelated Detective Dog Sherdock, a comic in which the sleuth is reincarnated as a dog; and the Arthur Conan Doyle-inspired boy crime-solver Detective Conan, whose latest animated adventure trounced Keanu Reeves’s 47 Ronin at the Japanese box-office. But the BBC series recently received the ultimate accolade: completely faithful (ie, free of tentacled creatures and and robots) comic-book adaptations of the episodes A Study in Pink and The Blind Banker in Young Ace magazine. As the above rendering proves, Cumberbatch’s gamine features make him the perfect manga hero. 11.

And in South Korea, he’s (almost) a pop star K-pop pretty-boys SHINee paid tribute to the series with their 2012 hit Sherlock, and an accompanying video full of slightly suspect Holmes-ian references (violin, shabby Victoriana decor, an ‘iWatson’ laptop), in which they solve a jewel heist seemingly perpetrated by a ghost: 12. ‘221b Baker Street’ actually looks like this Credit: Zoopla The 370 sq ft one-bedroom flat above Speedy’s Cafe (see number 4), which is in fact about a mile away from Baker Street but doubles as Sherlock’s home for exterior shots, was available for rent in early 2012 for the price of £330 a week. 13. Sherlock isn’t a sociopath In A Study In Pink, Anderson flippantly calls Holmes a psychopath. "Do your research, Anderson," comes the reply. “I'm a high-functioning sociopath.” Not true, according to psychologist Maria Konnikova, who convincingly argues that Sherlock is altogether too loving, empathetic, and aware of his own faults to be considered a sociopath. 14.

But he may be autistic Late last year, autism charity the National Autistic Society cited Sherlock’s single-mindedness, inability to understand social norms such as sarcasm, and incredible feats of recall as evidence that he might be autistic . This, despite Watson making a direct reference to his friend’s Asperger’s in The Hounds of Baskerville . 15. Even the fonts have meaning Credit: BBC As typography design experts have noted, the lettering used for Sherlock’s on-screen graphics varies according to the occasion. For text messages, AF Generation Z is used; to show Sherlock deduction process, it’s P22 Johnston Underground (above); Irene Adler’s high-end Vertu phone uses the business-like Verdanda. Johnston Underground is also used as the basis for the series’ custom-made title font. 16. The Russians have their own Sherlock Credit: Star Media Freud’s Method, a crime drama produced by Russia’s Star Media, bears a striking resemblance to the BBC series.

The lead character is Roan Freydin, a "psychologist and professional poker player" working as a "special consultant" to the police, who are infuriated by his "eccentric methods" but impressed by his ability to solve crimes using "psychological science" and "intuition". Even the opening titles ( which have been posted on YouTube ) look a little familiar, as Mark Gatiss noted with his tweet: "Ha! The sincerest form of flattery". 17. Sherlock is (possibly) responsible for BlackBerry’s woes In 2010, season one of Sherlock showed Holmes using a blazingly fast BlackBerry 9700; come season two, broadcast by the BBC in early 2012, he’d made the switch to an Apple iPhone 4. By the end of January, BlackBerry co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie had stepped down, admitting that the company had failed to compete with Apple. Coincidence? Draw your own conclusions. 18. Matt Smith wanted to be Watson A week before landing the part of Doctor Who , Matt Smith auditioned to play John Watson; Steven Moffat decided he was "too barmy", and that one Sherlock was enough.

Martin Freeman, on the other hand, arrived at his audition having had his wallet stolen on the way and was in such a bad mood it was assumed he wasn’t interested. The following week, he returned in a better frame of mind, read with Benedict Cumberbatch, and the part was his. 19. Benedict Cumberbatch hates Sherlock’s hair The actor’s preparations for looking the part of Sherlock include intense Bikram yoga sessions, swimming, and no smoking or drinking during filming. But there’s one thing he especially hates doing: growing his hair. As he told The Times, “I can’t think of a wittier or even accurate comparison, but I just think it makes me look a bit like… a woman.” 20. Mark Gatiss learnt to swim in Moriarty’s pool At the end of season one, Moriarty lures Holmes and Watson to a beautiful public pool in order to kill them. The location used (for both the cliffhanger and the beginning of season two, forcing the crew to return a year later and recreate the signage) is Bristol South Swimming Pool; according to the Sherlockology blog, this is also where a young Mark Gatiss learnt to swim. 21.

Sherlock and Mrs Hudson knew each other in a previous life Una Stubbs as Mrs Hudson Credit: BBC Benedict Cumberbatch has often said that Una Stubbs (above), who plays his screen landlady Mrs Hudson, mothers him on the set of Sherlock. But she has good reason: Stubbs is an acting contemporary of Cumberbatch’s mother Wanda Ventham (who made a surprise appearance in The Empty Hearse as Sherlock's Les Mis-loving mother , alongside the actor's father Timothy Carlton as Holmes senior), and used to live around the corner from her when Cumberbatch was a child. So a four-year-old Benedict would often find himself forced to endure hours of boredom as Stubbs and his mother gossiped on park benches or street corners. Stubbs nonetheless found him “Very polite... A lovely boy.” 22. The owner of Charles Augustus Magnussen's house doesn't even live there Credit: BBC The villain’s mansion, called Appledore, is owned in real life by one of the country’s most successful engineers – but millionaire Sir David McMurtry does not live there because his wife thinks it is too flashy.

In the original script for episode His Last Vow, Moffat said that Appledore should look like “the Citizen Kane mansion for the iPod generation”. Premium 13 Jan 2017, 1:12pm

Question: Which musical instrument does fictional detective Sherlock Holmes play?
Answer: Violin